


hold on to you

by valkyriered



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, New Years, POV Lance (Voltron), Sleepy Cuddles, Team Voltron Family, Team as Family, brief mention of pidge/ofc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-07 23:03:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13445271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valkyriered/pseuds/valkyriered
Summary: A New Years ficlet crossposted from my blog. Lance reflects on his found family as they enter the New Year together.





	hold on to you

“We’re going to miss the fireworks.”

“Nnn?”

“It’s almost midnight. We should get up.”

Lance squirms. He can feel Pidge’s knee digging into his back, Hunk’s arm on his chest, Shiro’s fingers tangled in his hair. Keith is across the pile, but his arm is stretched out just enough that his fingers are brushing his thigh. 

“I’m too comfortable.” Lance murmurs, although now his eyes are open and he can feel his fingers and toes waking up from the trance-like state that they get into when they doze together.

“It’s only once a year.” Keith says.

Lance feels Shiro shift. “It’s okay. It’s been a long year.” Keith lets out a sigh. Lance hears a soft scratching noise and knows Shiro’s running his fingers through his hair.

Lance blinks again, slowly. The night is dry and warm, and he can hear people laughing and music playing in the distance. They’re lucky that it’s dry— this time of year it’s usually so humid that he can feel the weight of the dampness on his arms and legs and in his hair. But it’s dry, and they’re sprawled on a mess of carpets and pillows and blankets that were spread across a thick patch of grass earlier in the day. The open air tent is large and strung with lights, big glass ones where if he focuses enough, he can hear the quiet buzzing of energy running through the filament. (Keith hears it too, and they’re not sure if it’s a Galra thing or a Red thing.)

He feels warm and safe and full. The music gets a little louder, and it echoes across the field. He wonders if they can hear them down in the valley. Once it got dark, they could see the glittering of the city lights below them. The mountain is so high up that when they drove up, he felt his ears pop and the air felt clearer. Shiro had bounded out of the car, excited by the height and the clean air against his skin. Cuba is good for him, they like Shiro here, he laughs easily and talks to everyone and he’ll dance with the girls and blush when the brave ones try and goad him into a kiss.

It’s a good place for New Years. It’s good to be together. Shiro was very nearly going to spend it in Japan, but there’s nothing there for him but gravestones, so they took him to Cuba instead. It took some bullying to get Pidge to go— she’s gotten more introspective, quieter and doesn’t leave her room all that often, but once she was off the plane she became more animated and curious and more of her old self. They had met his family and after a full week of talking each other’s ears off, Lance’s sister had shyly tangled fingers with Pidge earlier that evening. It was painfully obvious that Pidge had never learned how to dance, but she tried and Maria laughed so hard she turned pink. Pidge had flushed too.

They’re young, he thinks. Long distance is hard, but they have another month in Cuba. Maybe things could work out. He stretches his legs, hearing the crack in his knees and wiggling his toes against the night air. He’s awake now, but he still doesn’t want to move. They’re warm and safe here, pressed against each other in every-which-way. Besides, they were with a lot of people today. They needed some alone time, just the five of them, to fall back into the safety of the bond. Keith was getting edgy.

Keith looks less sure here. It’s out of his comfort zone. After so long with just the Paladins, it’s hard to be with other people, hardest for Keith who was alone for so long before that. They’re hyper-aware of it, taking time to just be alone and themselves when Keith needs to retreat into the bond for a bit. He didn’t like meeting Lance’s family, he pulled into himself and withdrew into Shiro, because the parts of him marked ‘family’ were still so raw. It’s hard to suddenly have to share people that were once only his. They all feel variations on the same jealous tug, but Keith has always felt so much more than the rest of them. 

He likes the beaches, though. He likes the beaches and the mountains and the lush wildness of nature in the emptier parts of Cuba. Lance had watched him wade into the placid water of a beach at low tide and stand there, and he’d wondered if maybe Keith could have piloted Blue. If he’d just needed to find that part of himself.

Hunk could’ve probably piloted Blue too, but he liked Yellow. He melted so easily into the love and protection that came from their bond. Lance turns his head to look at Hunk, and sees him sleepily looking back at him. He offers him a small smile, shifts forward to press his forehead against his before sighing and closing his eyes.

Warm and safe, he thinks again. Hunk is so different from when they started out together, but in so many ways still the same. They’re still best friends, still linked together by that. Even sharing with three other people, it doesn’t diminish the way they began together, the way they’re still like this after years of fighting and changing and growing into the men they were always going to be. If Lance focuses, he can almost convince himself he feels the glowing yellow light emanating from Hunk’s core, the protection and strength that comes with it. The lions always gave them a vague idea of where the others were when they were piloting, but it’s faded since Voltron was disbanded. Still, Lance likes to think that if he looks enough, he can find it. That he can still feel them.

Because not having that anymore would be terrifyingly lonely.

In the distance, Lance hears a shouted count-down, and then the familiar pop-pop of fireworks. Shiro flinches, disturbing the pile, but Keith and Pidge press closer to him, bracketing him from either side. Lance keeps his eyes screwed shut. Even if the bond is truly gone, and he’s alone and lonely in his head again, he still has this. The love between the five of them is palpable in the warmth of their bodies against each other, their fingers tangled, their breathing in synch. He can feel all of them against him, in their pile, in this tent, on the planet they call home, and knows that he is loved. They’re entering the new year together, like they should, like they’re meant to. The thudding loneliness in his chest fades slightly, and he lets himself melt back into the rest of them.

**Author's Note:**

> song title from taylor swift because i'm that extra


End file.
